The present disclosure describes systems and techniques relating to electrical circuits.
Frequency dividers are an integral part of phase-lock loop circuits, making them a building block in radio frequency identification circuits (RFIC) and microwave circuits. In some phase-locked loop circuits, an output of a voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO) is divided by a frequency divider to a frequency at which a temperature-compensated crystal oscillator operates. A phase detector compares the divided signal and the temperature-compensated crystal oscillator signal. The voltage-controlled oscillator output frequency can be adjusted in some circuits by using the output phase difference.
In some conventional frequency divider implementations, trade-offs arise concerning the maximum operating frequency, power consumption, number of transistors needed and flexibility. In analog frequency dividers, a conventional range for input signals is 20 GHz to 100 GHz. The range for conventional digital frequency dividers in complementary metal-oxide-semiconductors is below 1 GHz to 10 GHz.